“France cannot be France without greatness,” wrote Charles de Gaulle in the opening of his memoirs. His nation, he insisted, must always be in “the first rank”. Vladimir Putin feels the same way about Russia. Back when I was still able to visit that country, Fyodor Lukyanov — a foreign policy thinker close to Putin
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Inflated shipping costs are enabling Russian companies to earn far more from crude oil sales to India than previously recognised, according to a Financial Times analysis which suggests that the charges may have raised more than $1bn in a single quarter. Russia has, until recently, appeared to comply on this route with western measures designed
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Sly, Soviet-style jokes are enjoying a subtle revival on Chinese social media platforms. Their art resides in being too obscure for censors to understand yet clear enough for cynics to chuckle at their mockery. Some are so esoteric that their satire is confirmed only by the censors’ decision to delete them — echoing the cat-and-mouse
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Brazilian lawmakers are moving forward with a legislation that would raise taxes on cryptocurrencies held overseas. According to local reports, a congressional committee has approved amendments to a bill that recognizes cryptocurrencies as “financial assets” for tax purposes in foreign investments. In addition, the draft bill taxes gains from fluctuations in crypto asset prices against
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Binance’s proprietary BNB Smart Chain (BSC) is set to undergo two hard forks through August 2023 that are aimed at reducing the possibility of a malicious blockchain reorganization and increasing the compatibility with other EVM blockchain networks. The Plato and Hertz upgrades are scheduled for Aug. 10 and Aug. 30 respectively, following extensive testing. The
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Bitcoin (BTC) traders are currently not pleased with the recent price trends, especially due to the inability of its price to surpass the $30,500 mark over the last four weeks. This frustration is compounded by the fact that several requests for spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are either being delayed or pending review from regulators.
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California is following other states in a push to snare federal infrastructure money to develop the state’s hydrogen market. Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Tuesday that he has directed the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, more commonly known as GO-Biz, to develop a hydrogen market development strategy for the state, employing an all-of-government
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Pictured here are residential buildings developed by Country Garden Holdings Co. in Baoding, Hebei province, China, on Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023. Qilai Shen | Bloomberg | Getty Images BEIJING — Two years after Evergrande’s debt troubles, worries about China’s real estate sector are coming to the forefront again. Country Garden, one of the largest non-state-owned
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A Chapter 11 bankruptcy involving a bond-financed Arizona participant sports venue will continue to move forward in an effort to sell the property after a federal court judge denied a motion to appoint an independent trustee for the debtor or dismiss the case. Judge Daniel Collins’ Wednesday order acknowledged disputed allegations of mismanagement and infractions
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US inflation in July is expected to have risen at roughly the same pace as in June, suggesting that price pressures in the world’s biggest economy are continuing to ease and strengthening the case for the Federal Reserve to hold interest rates steady at its next meeting in September.  The consumer price index (CPI) is
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